'1 An K/habet/ian Survey and Domesday Hook. i 9 



1086 there were two teams in demesne, Therefore it ii practically 



vrt - 11 " *at the area of arable in the tenants' hands in 1086 could 

 not have exceeded 373 acres, Dividing this bv find that the 



average holding must have- Ix-cn less than u aci 



The maximum arable area that it seems possible to concedr to 

 Canton is 765 acres. There were three teams in demesne in ,086 ; 

 allowing 50 acres to the team, 615 acres are left as tenants' land 



ing by 62, we get 9-9 acres as the average holding 

 But before accepting these small numbers as correctly represent- 

 in- the area of the average tenement, we have to consider whether 

 the recorded population have not been counted twice Thus 

 ssor Ma.tland, in his analysis of Domesday, says 'There is' 

 ? think that some of the freemen and sokcmen of [Norfolk 

 and Suffolk] get counted twice or thrice because they hold land 

 under several different lords 1 .' 



But in Fornesseta (St Mary's) only two persons could have been 

 ounted a second time, for the three sokemen were connected with 

 ?od's manor, and of the nine recorded freemen seven were 

 igod s men and two were connected with Bishop Osbern's manor 

 Assuming that the latter were also Bigod's men, the number of 

 Arsons would be reduced by two, and the area of the average holding 

 increased to 117 acres. This is the maximum area possible 

 lere is reason to believe that the actual area was less than this. 



f the 42 freemen and sokemen in Twanton, four 'and a half 



held of Earl Alan ; the rest held of Bigod, some immediately and 



iers, apparently, through mesne lords. It is impossible to 



termme certainly how many of them may have been counted 



more than once ; but the weight of probability strongly favours the 



ssumption that the average tenement in Twanton was not more 



than u or 12 acres. 



\Ve are prepared to find many small servile tenements in a 

 strict where the bordarii were so numerous 2 , but the holdings of 

 bhe freemen must also have been very small 3 . 



1 Domesday Book and Beyond, 20. 



- Maidand, Domesday, 40. Cf. Vinogradoff, C,rwth of Manor, 338. 



ery small tenements seem to have been characteristic of Kast Anglia generally. Light 

 point ,s obtained from the 'Three Manorial [Has, Anglian] Extents of the Thirteenth 

 Century pnmec , translation by R cv . W. Hudson in Norfolk and Nonvich Arch. Soc., 

 Norfolk Archaeology, xiv. i-;6 (1X99). 



2 2 



